


Fiddle of Gold

by Bioluminescent



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-14 16:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7180514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bioluminescent/pseuds/Bioluminescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi: Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken</p><p>So what if when people get hurt, they heal in gold instead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve

**Author's Note:**

> This was an idea that just wouldn't leave me alone until it got written. I saw a post about this art and I immediately started thinking of an alternate universe with people scarring gold and when they break anything like bone they heal in gold. So here you go.
> 
> This first chapter is about the pain that Steve feels through parts of his life. Eventually I will add the other Avengers and some extras.

Every Friday the hospitals would burn the hospital sheets.

They used to burn them because with every patient that laid on them, the less original white you could see and the more yellow the sheets became. Because it was harder to wash out gold instead of blood. It took too long and was too expensive for most hospitals in the early 1900s.

For some reason, this was one memory that was always at the forefront of Steve's mind.

Sitting on the roof with Bucky on a hot August night, their shoulders touching as dark smoke rose over the dingy buildings of their little neighborhood at the back of the hospital to waft over the streets. You would think that the smoke would be gold, that the pain of others would still exist after death, but it is swallowed by those hungry crackling flames instead. The memory of their pain is all that remains. That and a pile of bleeding ash.

But Steve has had his own fair share of pain and white cloth turned gold.

Before Bucky showed up one day in an alley fight to save his bleeding skin, Steve had to deal with his golden wounds himself. By the time his mother would return from a long day at work in the hospital, all the kitchen towels would be blotchy with red and gold. 

The first time she came home early to see Steve holding an already soaking towel to his nose, she almost fainted at the sight of so much gold. His bruised eye was a harsh black and blue and shining yellow outline against his pale skin, but his nose wasn't bleeding red. It was all gold.

Steve could never understand the frantic motions of his mother that first day, her shaking hands stroking his hair as if he was about to fall apart with a single touch or too harsh breath, her insistence to him to stay at home for another day from school. Her little Stevie was a fragile four years old.

Because all she saw when she saw his bleeding golden nose and the faint auric tinge of sweat against his forehead was the pale faces of the dead on marigold colored sheets. The dying sweating sheets of tinted water to stain the bed they rested on, shining tears slipping down their faces and on the faces of their loved ones, hands gripped tightly enough to bring a yellowish tinge to their fingers. And the bed sheets to be burned the day after.

All she saw was her little Stevie laying on one of those beds, his body dripping with gold and his chart marking bed sheets to be burned.

Years later, she comes home to little Stevie sitting on the kitchen table holding a cloth to his nose and a tan boy scolding him for getting into another fight. She sees her little boy being taken care of by someone other than herself, someone who understands and who will eventually fear the gold coming out of that little body as much as her, and she relaxes for the first time since his birth.

Here is someone who bleeds just as much gold and red as her son. Here is someone who can protect him long after she is dead and her bed sheets are burned.

And so Bucky sees to it that Steve doesn't bleed as much anymore. Instead, Sarah comes home more and more frequently to her Stevie holding an icepack to strong hands dripping gold from the knuckles and wiping shimmering blood off a cheekbone. Instead of hearing her son wheeze for breath and the shuddering beats of his heart under her ear, she hears his small but strong voice scolding another for getting into his fight, for bleeding gold for him.

The last thing she sees in her life are blue and brown and gold eyes staring down at her. She sees her little Stevie being taken care of by someone stronger than her. She sees a drop of gold falling towards her cheek and she closes her eyes and smiles, reaching for that precious golden tear before it gently taps her face. The last thing Sarah Rogers thinks is how much she loves her little golden boy.

She is burned with her sheets.

Steve looks up from an alley fight one day wiping metal stained blood from his nose, his fists shining with it and sees an army uniform standing before him. His entire world sinks into a riotous ocean of blood and gold and pain and loss for the second time in his life. A loss so profound that Steve agrees to go on the useless date again. He agrees to spend time with Bucky because he knows how likely it is he will see his friend again after he leaves.

His life and his protector ships out the day after the double date. Steve signs up for the army the same day.

Dr. Erskine agrees to his participation only because of what he can see and the other Generals can't. They see a fragile body practically seeping out gold in the day and night, a useless addition for some goodwill. He sees a strong man, a good man fighting for his life to save the lives of others. He sees a stubborn man refusing to be beaten to a pulp no matter how many people try.

Soon enough, a woman other than little Stevie's mother sees the same thing. 

She talks to Steve and she can see how Steve fights for his life. She can see the way he tries not to smile around her too much, how he fears the moment she will abandon him like all the other women have in his seemingly fleeting life. After she doesn't leave and before everything changes, Steve tells her what it is like to be colorblind in a world of color.

He tells her how he can see the difference between darker colors and lighter colors in varying shades of black, white, and grey. She listens as he describes the gold in his life. How he knows the difference between blood and the visible pain on his skin and the skin of others. How those shades of grey and white and black shine with a throbbing sheen of metal, how those biological liquids sparkle and dance in the sun like nothing else in his world. How tears can shine so brightly in a world of ash and pain and smoke.

She watches with Howard Stark and Dr. Erskine as the pod holding Steve Rogers begins to smoke and as his screams fill the air. The pain must be unbearable someone behind her mutters. But she knows how much pain Steve is always in, how this experience is just a new flavor, a new shade of golden pain to him. She watches the smoke and thinks of burning sheets and hospital staff.

Those silver doors open and she sees a muscled body glistening with sweat, and she does not see any gold. It is a shock to her and those around her who had seen Steve before this. How his body used to seep gold from his pores, how he would always sweat and bleed melted gold in streams.

Her hand goes out to touch that skin to confirm to herself that this is indeed little Steve Rogers. To everyone's shock and amazement it is. But the shock soon bleeds into triumph and that triumph soon bleeds into fear and anger as Erskine is shot, as the man runs, as Steve chases after him.

Everyone sees Steve's new body and sees the body, the dubious science behind it. Peggy sees Steve's eyes just before he gives chase and she sees all that pain condensed in his pupils, as they water and glimmer with such a strong golden color it is like staring straight at the sun.

In the hours that follow, the sun is covered and extinguished, discarded off to the side as another body is burned with the sheets around it.

What seems like years later she sees the sun again. Dejected and broken, drawing himself as a dancing monkey. At her words, she sees the sun return and all the pain get shoved down into a place deep inside him. She watches as he rushes around the camp as quickly as possible, as Howard agrees to fly them behind enemy lines, as Steve jumps out the plane and she thinks, _This is not healthy_.

But as bullets shriek in anger and excitement against the sides of the plane and as Howard grins and laughs manically in the night, all she can feel is relief that the sun has found a purpose to continue spinning.

Just as Steve and the remainder of the 107 Infantry Regiment are written off as good as dead, they come marching down the muddy road with splashes of gold soaking into their clothes. Cheers fill the air for the newly christened Captain America and Peggy relaxes as she sees Steve grin at a shining and bloody Sergeant at his side.

Years go by of pain and success and Hydra and war and gold. But the sun and the moon continue to spin around each other in a comfortable habit born over a lifetime. They continue to orbit as they go out on another mission together, anger built into their bodies over their target.

Only one returns.

For a moment Peggy can only wish that the serum allowed Steve to get drunk, and she can only wish that the moon hadn't fallen from the sky.

Peggy sees as Steve changes subtly over the death of his friend. She sees the smoldering anger fueled by despair as Steve leads the Howling Commandos in another mission. She listens as Steve calls after his fight with the Red Skull on the plane, she listens to the pain in his voice and she wonders if gold is dripping from his mouth like it does for a bloody nose.

Her own golden tears fall as she listens to that painful voice.

“I'd hate to step on your...”

She listens as the radio fills with static.

For the next 67 years, there is no one there to listen.

For the next 67 years, Steve gets to deal with the pain and loss by himself, the cold doing nothing to numb his grief.

You would think that freezing in ice would kill you, or at least keep you unconscious and unaware of every creak and groan of shifting ice above you for the next few decades. But you would be wrong. 

Steve tilted the plane down into the waiting crashing waves, and moved to lie down on a bench in the bare plane. Settling himself down as comfortable as he can against the forty five degree angle into waiting death. The glass cockpit shatters at the force of impact, icy water rushing into the plane and almost tearing Steve from his spot. It burbles around him almost cheerfully and soon his clothes are plastered to his body, the water filling in too fast for him to comprehend. It washes over his head and Steve holds his breath foolishly before letting it out and inhaling. Choking against the water does nothing to hold back the first few vestiges of fear and panic in his mind.

Soon enough, all he can see is gold above him.

He sleeps, if you can even call that sleep.

Death is always hovering over him, childhood memories reaching out to him, his mother asking him to join her as he frantically searches for Bucky those first few years. But for all he is worth, he can't find him. His mother watches as her son begins to bleed again.

For some reason, death never collects.

Instead, Steve wakes intermittently in his block of ice, his eternal hell.

Each time it is different. The first few times he can see the weak rays of light that have fought their way down to his frozen body. They keep him company with his grief and guilt and anger and pain. Even now he feels that pain fighting against him, urging him to just relax and let it all go. He remembers the face of the moon falling from the sky and almost says yes. 

But he is not allowed to go just yet. Not yet. His pain reminds him of that. The grief pushed him to freeze that block sitting in the bottom of his stomach, to numb all those feelings fighting in him, in that new hollow spot in his torso. That very same grief pushes his body to live.

Steve can never understand each time he wakes up, whether it is for a second or hours, in his frozen prison, why he can still feel the burn of ice on his skin, why he still has the ability to _feel_. He wonders as the sun loses its fight against each new layer of ice burying him, why can't that part of him freeze with the rest of him. He wonders why he can't close his eyes against the golden reflections in the last rays of sun that reach him, because when he did close his eyes, he still saw the gold.

One more time, Steve wakes up.

Slowly, peacefully, and for a moment he thinks he has finally died, that the ice has finally let him rest, but no. Words begin to reach his ears and his eyes open against the gold. Confusion bleeds its way into his mind as he looks around the room, the baseball game playing in the background, and he frowns. Everything feels familiar, feels like home, but there is something missing. 

Sitting up on the bed, Steve catalogs everything in the room.

The sheets under his hand are too new, too white, and all too soft for what should be there. There are no faint stains of gold in their threads. His shoes are on and he is sitting on top of the sheets. Why is he on top of the sheets. What kind of hospital is this that has patients lie on top of neatly made beds instead of under the sheets.

The air is too clean for the middle of New York City, and the radio is too clear a sound it should be crackling and jumping around, not this steady hum of noise. And the baseball game is too familiar, but as his brain frantically brushes away the cobwebs from his memory, the door opens.

A woman enters. He shoves down panic as he stares at her, mindlessly listening to her speak. Her clothes are all wrong. Her tie is too long, too fat, her hair isn't up the way it should be if she actually worked in a hospital, and now she speaks of it being the afternoon.

“Where am I?”

To his surprise, his voice does not sound like ice and pain and blood. It sounds suspicious.

“You're in a recovery room in New York City.”

Steve's eyes flick down her body. Everything is wrong. Her breasts sit too high up on her chest, her makeup too monochromatic, her shirt is the wrong color, and her tights are the wrong fabric.

A memory flings itself at him.

The sound of an announcer fighting to be heard against the roar of the crowd, a too hot arm brushing against his as they move to get a better view of the field, hot dogs and popcorn filling the air with grease and butter. The crowd grows louder as the teams move on the field and the crisp crack of a bat is heard throughout the stadium. Steve remembers looking up for a moment to see the excitement and joy written across Bucky's face and the way that arm slung itself around his shoulders to shake him.

He looks back at the woman. He questions her, her face going blank. Anger rises through his veins and the pain disappears for a single moment. Standing he can see her nervousness as he advances and sees a single blink of red in her hand.

The door opens and men step into the room, guns in their hands. Unconsciously, Steve's brain makes a checklist of everything that is wrong with the moment – the wrong guns, the wrong body armor, the wrong smell, the wrong buildings outside – before the two men go through the wall. 

The woman's voice sounds over the speaker as he bolts from the room, men in suits trying to stop him as he rushes outside. 

It's too bright. Too much movement, too much light, it's just all _too MUCH_ \--

“At ease, soldier.”

Steve turns and there stands an African-American man, a black eye patch not enough to hide the gold behind it for Steve's eyes.

Then the man says some words that tear down his world for the seventh time in his life.

“You've been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years.”

Steve bites back what he wants to really say, to swear and rail and scream and cry, but there are too many people here for that. Instead he thinks of his Peggy, and the world is awash in gold.

“I had a date.”

Steve learns that in the 21st Century, the hospital beds are yellow instead of white.


	2. Tony

At first, the only red and gold blood that Tony knew was that of the terrorists his father fought from his workshop, his nimble fingers making weapons to help America win, again, and again, and again.

Soon enough Tony learned to greet his own gold-red blood like he greeted his own little machines, learned the pain under waves of disappointment, the smell of alcohol, and the taste of metal in his mouth.

Months later, Tony will know his mother's blood as deeply as he knows his own.

A buffer takes place, protecting them both as much as he can from the rages his father will go into, rolling with the violent waves like a storm wall on the coast, stones glistening and a dull roar taking over as the storm grows and fades. He does his best, but occasionally a wave will be tall enough to reach past the wall, and flooding ensues.

Jarvis is more of a father to Tony than his actual father is.

But still Tony works to please his father, ignoring the calculating look in his father's eyes as he watches his son create things at such young ages, ignoring the way he is being groomed into the ultimate weapon fed by hunger for a fathers acceptance and love. A weapon more dangerous than an entire army marching across a continent to the booming drums of war.

Tony leaves home for MIT one night, sadness and relief on the faces of his mother and Jarvis, his father drunk in the basement, murmuring to the wires sparking in his hands and the warped metal scattered on the floor.

In between his classes, Tony learns to decipher the differing shades of gold that exist in the world. What was once a singular shade in his life of abuse and hunger soon becomes the shades of accidental hurt and love so strong and the shades of gold that follow bullies, the shades that are closest to Tony's life at home.

Soon Tony learns what his father experiences through alcohol at a late night party in the middle of the week. He vows to never touch it again as his head screams at him, his eyes watering at the rays of sunlight beaming into his room.

The media lies its way through his college years, telling of raging parties and many one night stands, painting a picture of a party boy too much like his father for anyones good.

Nobody tries too hard to look past the Tony created by the media until James Rhodes walks into a distracted Tony on the sidewalk.

Neither one looks back.

Not even when Rhodey goes to check on Tony one day after three days of no outside contact, and instead of a tired friend, opens the door to a creaky bot rolling on loose wheels towards him, beeping angrily as Tony groans and rolls over on the couch.

Dummy and Rhodey both work together to teach Tony the meanings behind the different shades of gold in the world, and how he does not need to bleed as much as he does when he comes back to school after staying at home for the winter and spring breaks.

When Tony turns twenty one, his world is awash in gold and red and screaming metal, his father dead, his mother in the seat next to him, and Jarvis beaten to a bloody pulp in the garage.

The world teeters around Tony and he stumbles, waiting for someone to pick up his messes as he goes. Obadiah Stane only shakes his head and drags Tony out of his messes, only caring about the machines he produces, much like his father in the aspect of grooming a broken and steaming weapon back into running again. Three bots take shape in Tony's life, ensuring the machine to run a little bit longer, and soon after that, JARVIS takes extreme care to help his creator through his rough patches, to protect him the ways he physically cannot.

Soon that burden is shared by Pepper Potts, an uncharacteristically strong women to the charms of Tony Stark and how his past practically seeps out golden light. 

The world moves on, regardless of singular struggles and triumphs, all the while encouraging not only the bright rays of the sun to shine upon its surface, but also the little bursts and streams of gold that leak and drip their way out of its inhabitants.

Or in some cases, burst out in such a strong light that it rivals the pain when you look directly at the sun for too long.

A trip to Afghanistan where the sun shines so harshly on the ground is where it all ends in ringing ears and dead soldiers and blood seeping through skin and a missile made by his own design.

Tony bursts and flares much like the sun does, but his life is more dependent on his golden blood staying inside his body, curling around the silver shards of shrapnel circling his heart like a swarm of sharks around downed and weakening prey. And he stays glimmering golden dribbles of blood around the hole in his chest now filled with a lump of metal slaving to keep him alive.

Eventually the hole in his chest turns to a soft blue light surrounded by shining scar tissue colored gold with the trauma of the event.

An obsession takes over his world, an idea growing from more loss and pain and death, from the gnawing knowledge that what he had been doing to better the world had actually been making it a more dangerous place to live. Improved parts and technology lead to a better, more capable suit than his original creation used to escape his captors, the arc reactor beginning to ache and seep new rivulets of gold the longer the old prototype stays in.

As always, Tony finds a solution. A newer and cleaner version of the reactor is put into his chest by Pepper with her small hands in a twisted version of the game Operation. Pepper looks sick at the sight of so much gold slipping down the hole in his chest, gleaming bright and shiny next to the silver walls of the reactor's home.

Reassurances help and soon enough, new energy is flying throughout his body, his heart jumping and quivering almost uncontrollably at the additional power of the reactor. It only takes a moment for Tony to realize that he is going to need to do more physical activities with this staying permanently in his chest, what with all the extra energy flowing through him.

So he does.

And the armor gets made. And tested. And remade.

Tony begins to save people, and he even saves an Air Force pilot in a crash that was (not) his fault. He can feel the hurt over the phone as he talks to Rhodey more in depth about the suit later that night. Just imagining the way that the gold just under his darker skin would rise in a glowing blush over his cheekbones and over the tendons in his clenched hands.

Hearing the unspoken words, _Why didn't you trust me enough?_ and ignoring them.

And sooner rather than later, Tony realizes who else he should not have trusted as much as he did.

After Pepper has left with her own mission, Tony is rendered incapable of moving by a shrill whining in his ear and the deep rumble of Obadiah's voice. False gentleness is combined with the cold feel of Obie's hands on his head, guiding it down to the back of the couch. As a deep chill of fear runs through him, warm blood runs down the side of his face out of his ears, and Tony can see hint of gold from the corner of his eye.

Obadiah talks to him in a soft gentle voice, and when he pulls out the little machine from his briefcase, all Tony is capable of doing is glaring.

With a soul sucking wrench, and a mixture of searing pain and wrongness, the arc reactor is pulled out of his body.

Lurching back, Obadiah almost drops the reactor but recovers quickly from the blinding golden light coming from Tony's chest, mixing violently with the blue of the reactor.

“Fucking hell, I should have brought sunglasses.” Eyes squinting, Obadiah throws a blanket over the light, dimming it enough so that he can sit next to Tony on the couch. He raises the reactor to eye level. “Isn't it beautiful?” Turning it slightly, Obadiah admires his catch casually, as Tony slowly dies next to him. Shaking it, Obie turns to face him better. “This is your legacy.”

Busying himself with stowing his stolen gem away, Obadiah gives a wistful little sigh, shaking his head as he closes the case with a firm click of locks. As he stands he leans over Tony. “Although I do wish you hadn't involved Pepper into this. She is too lovely a woman to die for your mistakes.”

Those words ring in Tony's ears. She is going to die.

Struggling through the paralysis sets off a supernova of light and pain in his chest, the blanket sliding off as he slides and shuffles his way into his workshop. The small hope that he would be able to save her, save _Pepper_ , vanishes as his fingers touch the box that holds his salvation, tantalizingly close but still too far.

Gasping, Tony wishes that Pepper survives even if he dies.

A quiet whir and soft beep break the silence that had settled over him.

Opening his eyes shows Dummy holding the old reactor in his claw, beeping and creaking concerned as he wiggles the box at him.

“Good boy.” 

Dummy is indignant after Tony breaks the box with a crash, glass scattering everywhere, but he ignores it, just lying on the floor for a moment as the pain recedes and the afterglow of gold is bright where it has burned into his eyes.

Rhodey's hands on him bring a burst of action and fear for Pepper, but it also brings the anger that Obie would do such a thing. He can feel the guilt, and the hurt, and the utter betrayal but viciously shoves it down, focusing on what needs to be done.

Afterwards, after all the fear and pain and the exploding arc reactor and Pepper screaming and Agent Coulson, Tony lets himself feel everything. In the safety of his workshop, surrounded by his bots and JARVIS speaking softly in the room, Tony allows himself to let it all go. Dummy curls his arm over his shoulders as You holds a rag in their claw and Butterfingers slides over to hold his hand.

The pain fades, and so does the harsh glow around the reactor which still burns from time to time with the pain and extended trauma of that night. And in the flow of things, as the pain leaves, the media comes rushing in like a tide chattering about the reactor explosion and the so called Iron Man and damage to the city and Stark Industries and weapons manufacturing.

But when Ms. Everhart challenges him, Tony can not just let that go.

Stick to the cards they said, well, they clearly do not know that he can not listen to direct orders when there is something so much better just dangling in front of him. And whatever it is that Tony Stark wants? 

He gets.

“I am Iron Man.”


End file.
